Classic Friday: Pat Abendroth and Romans 2:13

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Brothers, Backgrounds, and How the Lord Saves

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and the day of days, the hour of hour, the minute of minute, we have another Hafferhorf on the line, Patrick Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio.

Hey, thanks, Mike. Great to be with you.

Thank you.

Great to be a brother of the same mother.

You know what? It's so kind of our Lord, I think about people who don't have a brother, a physical brother, they don't have a brother that's alive or a brother who's a Christian, who has good theology, who's a pastor, who's like-minded, and we have it all.

Isn't the Lord good?

Indeed, He is. Someone just asked me the other day, someone who's going to Israel with us, he said, �So, how different are you and Mike? Are you really that similar, or what are the big things that stand out

And I almost felt like a politician or something, and I was trying to think of differences theologically, and I couldn't really do it. So I guess I'm just a weak follower, and I believe everything you believe.

Far from it. I bow to your theological insight. Tell us about your doctrine you just received.

What is there to say? Maybe, like John MacArthur said about the MacArthur Study Bible, it wasn't very good for my marriage.

Well, I actually took a couple of those Doctrine of Ministry classes at Ligonier with you. I was there for the Sinclair Ferguson week on worship, and the D .A. Carson week on Hebrews. But you took a lot of other classes.

Who were some of your favorite professors?

The justification class with R .C., spending the day with him was memorable. That was definitely a standout for me. We had a preaching class with Dennis Johnson, which was also really good. The Carson one was the hard one.

You opted out. You didn't have to take the exam, where people were losing their sanctification, stressing out about the exam. That was a doozy.

We must be the same, because I was looking at an old Mark sermon of mine, and I looked at it last night. I mean, how often do I look at an old Mark sermon? I was trying to find a quote, and I had, with my own writing, typed out, this is a doozy.

The best part was probably, joking aside about bad pre-marriage, it was super hard, because I'm not smart naturally. But writing the dissertation, it was so good to have J .V. Fesco be my advisor, because I would say things, and it's one of those things, Mike, where he would say, I see what you're saying, I hear what you're saying, essentially you're right, but see these five sources because you're not exactly right.

It's good to have someone who's smarter than you are, and who's actually academically qualified to critique your work, and I think the dissertation ended up being better because of that.

Well, Pat, I read the dissertation, and I thought it was excellent. I also saw those names on the front, not just your name, but the signatures of the advisors, and there was Fesco's name and Sinclair Buchanan Ferguson's.

That was pretty cool.

I thought it was pretty good, too. When that hard copy was sent to me, there was a little note inside from Stephen Nichols, and he said, isn't it cool that Sinclair signed it, or something like that. So it was kind of nice of him.

Absolutely. Well, tell us a little bit about your background. It's been a few years since you've been on the radio. What's your background, and how did the Lord save you?

9131 Tomahawk Boulevard.

Hoorah.

A little different now, but yeah, just in our kind of nominal Lutheran family, always believed in God, always believed the Bible was true, always believed Jesus died and rose again. Just didn't really know what it meant, the implications of it all.

At Lincoln, someone had the audacity to question my salvation, and part about that is it kind of caused me to go and read the Bible, and figure out pretty fast that I was saved. And then everything changed.

So in God's providence, similar things were happening in your life. And before you know it, you and I are talking about Jesus.

Pat, I remember when our father, Lee Henry Abendroth, died in January of 1989. I think we were getting ready to go to the wake, or the calling hours, or something. Weren't we sitting downstairs in the bedroom there, just drinking Coronas, just kind of trying to be, you know, pickled a little bit with our minds?

I remember. I think it was some kind of Miller. I think Corona would have been too, like, cross-cultural for us Omahans.

Yeah, well maybe Dad had some old, you know, some Falstaff or some old Milwaukee or something sitting around the house. Well, it's interesting.

Listening to a Smith song.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Tell me the story, because I think it's wonderful how the Lord lets you see this later on. You met the guy who was supposed to pray for a person who was the most unlikely to get saved.

It's a good story, because I was baptizing some people on a Sunday night at Omaha Bible Church, and out in the congregation I could see a guy I recognized named Kevin Oman. And Kevin Oman, he lived up the street from us by Masters Elementary, went to elementary school, junior high, high school with him.

One of those kind of guys who was super nice, who I ate lunch with him every day just because of scheduling, and we weren't buddies or anything. But I'm putting two and two together as I'm baptizing whoever it was, a friend of his, so he was visiting the church that night.

And I'm thinking, Kevin Oman, Kevin Oman, oh, Kevin was probably a Christian. That's why Kevin didn't laugh at my jokes at lunchtime and, you know, all that sort of thing. So we got together afterward, had lunch later that week, and he said, I've got to tell you that my Baptist youth pastor urged each of us in the class to pray for someone we thought was unsavable.

And I just started laughing. I could finish the sentence or the thought because I knew he was talking about me. So I love to tell the story because it's true, we're all unsavable, and apart from God's sovereign grace.

So I'm super thankful, it makes me want to pray for people, makes me thankful for God's kindness and grace.

Amen. And once in a while, he lets us see the fruit of what he's doing, and he let your friend see that very thing at that baptism. If you want to hear Pat's preaching, it's Omaha Bible Church, go to the website.

I was just listening to his message on the trial of Jesus, starts off with the OJ trial and then into the trial of Jesus. And if you want to hear a kinder, more articulate, faster bicycling Abendroth, you listen to Pat Abendroth, Omaha Bible Church.

Pat.

That was very funny.

Romans 2:13 and Justification by Faith Alone

Romans chapter 2, verse 13, for it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God but the doers of the law who will be justified. I wonder what would have happened to me or to you if someone would have come up to us in our nominal Lutheran Christian days and pushed that verse into our heart via preaching.

What would have been the response, I wonder?

I think maybe the response would have been, I'm not exactly sure where you're going with it, Mike, but I think the response, if they would have explained the words to us so we could actually understand, because I don't think I understood half of those words then, and they would have unpacked it and explained it, I would have come to the conclusion that I'm lost and I need a Savior because there's no possible way I could be a doer of the law as God requires.

Yeah, I bring that in because you and I regularly offline, off the radio, talk about Romans 2 .13 and how scholars of all kinds of different stripes try to make it seem different than what it is. Is not Paul trying to say to people, whether they're Gentiles, Jews, moralists, supposed law keepers, if you really want to get to heaven by keeping the law, then make sure you do it all because that's the only way you can stand before God.

What are your thoughts and opinions about these folks, social media commentaries, who make Romans 2 .13 something it's not plainly meant to be?

Well, I think it's a great litmus, Mike, and again, you and I talk about this, but it's a great text to read to people, to read yourself, and it'll help you decide whether or not you're a Roman Catholic or you're actually a Protestant.

See, that's why this is so fun.

Keep going.

Because it's clearly calling for absolute, perfect obedience to God's law in order to be justified. God's not going to justify the person who is not justifiable, doesn't even make sense. So if we take it at face value, we're going to say, no one is good, no, not one, certainly not me.

And that's exactly Paul's intent in context, as you know, in chapter three, he's going to get to that very point. There's none righteous, no, not one. And so I like to tell people that's a very short line.

The line of people like at the store or the gas station, the line of people standing in line to be justified, a la Romans 2 .13, is very, very, very short. I disagree with those who say there's no one in that line.

It's not a raw hypothetical, because there's actually one person who stands in that line, and his name is Jesus. What a great, great way to help people understand justification by faith alone.

Right.

Absolutely.

And earlier in chapter two, verse six, he talks about rendering to people according to their works. And if you do seek for glory and honor, He'll give eternal life. But that bar is impossible to jump over because of Adam's imputed sin, and then consequently our own sin nature.

But that still is the way to go if you want to do, what do I need to do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says to the rich young ruler, what?

Well, then...

Do this, yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Do this and you will live. Love God and love your neighbor.

Pat, when people make this something different than what we've just talked about, who then is the ultimate standard of how many works they need to do, how sincere they must be? Who then is the judge if it's not perfection?

Yeah, a lot of times it's either, you know, it's in the individual or it's the preacher who's requiring these things of someone. And that makes me go to Romans 10. Now we're establishing a righteousness of our own.

It's a wall that we set up that we can scale with a little help from God, which in actuality, there's no way we could do it. So people do the same thing in Romans chapter 10, amazingly enough. I like the quote from Calvin where he says, people who do this to Romans 2 .13 and make it something you can achieve should be laughed at even by children for their terrible exegesis and their terrible hermeneutics.

Sola Fide, Sanctification, and the Drift Toward Rome

Why do you think this is all happening these days in social media with sanctification? Do you think that people are trying to protect other Christians from lawlessness and moral laxity and everywhere you go in social media now, there's just this attack on the Reformed doctrine of sola fide.

Do you think it is moral laxity a concern for that or do you think there are other factors?

But I was struck by a quotation from, I think it was Robert Godfrey on a Ligonier post recently. And he said, first and foremost, this is a spirit. And that was kind of a jaw dropper for me, calling people out.

This is, there's a spiritual problem when you are doctoring up sola fide, especially when you say you're a Protestant and you say you promote it and defend it. There's something wrong with your heart.

And that gave me a reason for pause.

Well, this is certainly not to be trifled with. It's very important. Pat, tell our listeners, because it's related, what your doctoral thesis was, is, and why'd.

You write it?

Well, maybe I should say, to kind of warm up the knife before we slice the cake, I think I wrote it mainly because of the doctrine of justification, because I wanted to understand it better, because I was pretty motivated, given the fact that I didn't really understand it very well, issues related to imputation.

And there's so much compromising of it. That's why I wrote it. I forgot the title of it. Maybe I'll look at the actual title of it. It's probably not going to sell any books. Covenant Theology for the Uninformed, Unsympathetic, and Misinformed.

So, Covenant Theology is what it is, because Covenant Theology is federal theology, because phoidos, as you know, means covenant, and federal theology as covenant theology. I think it's just about a guarantee that you are going to undermine the doctrine of justification in Adam, the last Adam, in the appropriate way, in light of Romans chapter 5.

So, there it is in a nutshell.

Pat, when I think about Covenant Theology, maybe, you know, 20 years ago, my default was, the immediate turn off the freeway was amillennialism, and eschatological issues, and spiritualizing hermeneutics, those kind of things.

When I think of Covenant Theology now, I think of the three main covenants. You know, I think about a God who is a covenant-making God, a covenant-keeping God. I think of God who, we see in Scripture, has established the covenant of works, of grace and redemption.

And I rarely think, oh, this leads to amillennialism, or this goes with that eschatologically. Do you have the same thoughts?

I have the exact same thoughts, and I'm not sure who in the world, you know, created this false boogeyman that we're to avoid when, first and foremost, you know, federal theology is about, it deals with salvation.

It doesn't deal with millennial views, though they may be influenced by them. It's first and foremost not about millennial views, it's about salvation. And like you, I'm thankful for someone like S. Lewis Johnson, who showed these things to actually be biblical and could reach a dispensational kind of audience that we were a part of.

It's amazing to think that all kinds of dispensationalists even used to affirm a creation covenant with.

Adam.

And yet, I think another important thing, Mike, is to think in terms of, it's the people who upheld Covenant Theology with grace, who hand-in-hand Covenant Theology and vice versa. And so it's no wonder we are confused about imputation, affirmers of the law.

Well, you talked about that gospel, and then I split it back into two words, and so I stole the idea but had my own take on it, Abendrothian take, and so I call it the gaw and lospel, because it almost sounds like you're losing the gospel if you blend these two together.

And I think it was Phil Johnson who said to me that Daniel Fuller, and that was the mentor of Piper, Daniel Fuller, he mentored lots of people, it seems like, was one of the worst influences in evangelicalism in the last 25 years.

And I think he meant because of the gospel law blending and also a denial of the covenant.

Of works.

Yeah, it's amazing, because most people in our circles today don't know who Daniel Fuller is, but they certainly know who John Piper is. Right here on the stack of books, I have The Unity of the Bible by Dan Fuller, forward by John Piper, and John Piper says, No book besides the Bible has had a greater influence on my life than Daniel Fuller's The Unity of the Bible.

And Piper says, God's law stops being at odds with the gospel.

Pat, obviously, Piper has taught a lot of good things over the years, and lots of people have been influenced. That's why if you say anything negative about him, there's an automatic pushback when people don't even think, they just respond.

That's why when I'm talking about this issue, I like to just give a quote and say, do you agree with this quote? And then they say no, and then I tell them who said it, so they can at least think rationally and not emotionally.

I mean, if you say, as Lewis Johnson said, I'm automatically going to kind of agree with it because he's influenced me so much. So when Piper says something like, I don't know if he said it or not, but it was on the Desiring God Twitter feed, you're not saved by faith alone, be killing sin.

I mean, he knows what he's talking about. He writes the book Against N .T. Wright on justification. Why do you think he does it? Is he just trying to be inflammatory and using hyperbole? What's he trying to do?

Do you have any idea?

Well, I mean, you're the king of shock value preaching, so I think you can at least appreciate the shock value.

You know what? And for that, I commend him. But after the shock, then we need to reel it back.

We definitely do. We definitely do. It's interesting, too, Mike, that this isn't something new. This is old. He's been he's been denying this stuff for a long time. I actually think he's gotten better about it and clearer because how could you critique N .T. Wright when your view is essentially exactly the same as N .T. Wright?

So I think in engaging Wright, he at least backed away from some of his former shenanigans. He's totally wrong. You know, the unity of the Bible thing is we have law and gospel. There's no distinction.

There's no such thing as a covenant of works. It's no wonder that you believe that justification is by faith and works. And he does. Here's a quotation from him. I think that when Paul says doers of the law will be justified, he means that there really are such people, and they are the only people who will be acquitted at the judgment.

Pat, this is so frustrating to me because my response to him is, of course, how's that working out for you, right? How are you doing? And then who's the judge? If the ground or condition of our acceptance before the Lord, the thrice holy God, is anything but a perfect righteousness that we can't earn, of course, it's been earned by the Lord Jesus, then who's the arbitrator?

And I guess the arbitrator is the preacher, and then the final arbitrator is God with a final justification because the first one was just a precursor to the final one. It's so frustrating. Was it not Rome that said, hey, we want to take away your assurance?

And then this exactly does that. It takes away assurance of people who simply trust in the Lord Jesus and His finished work confirmed by the resurrection.

I have a whole ministry that's supposed to rob me of my joy because I don't have what I need to get to heaven in Christ. But then the rebuttal is, well, this is all because of God's grace, and God's grace working in your life, and God gets all the glory.

And again, Mike, we're back to Roman Catholicism. Rome was never Pelagian. They were semi-Pelagian.

Well, I was reading that Peter Kreft article, the Roman Catholic scholar, and he knows the difference, and he's saying, you know, when it comes to salvation by faith alone language, that's actually kind of Roman Catholic language.

The justification by faith alone, that's Protestant language. And so it's this drive back to Rome, and how sincere, you know, will our works be? Why can't people just say, listen, we've already fought this battle, and we affirm the Bible teaches what the Reformed confessions teach.

You are justified by faith alone, new category, period, stop, but in addition to that, in regards to sanctification, that faith won't be alone. Why can't we just talk like we used to talk with the Westminster Divines?

Our Owen and the Savoy Confession, our the London Baptist Confession. Why are we going to try to improve these things?

Yeah, that's a great question, but I think it ends up being, well, confessions aren't right. We don't believe in confessions. We just believe the Bible, never mind the fact that our new confessional standard would be, you know, the most popular preachers.

So you couldn't be more right. It'd be good if we went back and saw how other people have articulated these things and made them clear. And the question I had for you is regarding one of your provocative, good tweets recently along these same lines, when you challenged people to read a good book on justification, you said, you know, read Buchanan or read Fesco or someone like that, and it would really clear this kind of stuff up.

One thing I was thinking about regarding that, and I would agree wholeheartedly, those things.

Are...

How many people do you and I know will begin reading one of those books and they'll put it down and think it's unbiblical? You know what I'm getting at? As soon as they see some words that they're uncomfortable with, some titles they're uncomfortable with, they're going to discount it entirely.

You see where I'm going or not?

Yeah, I do.

And so maybe a simpler way to go about this, if people don't have the time or they don't have the resources, or even Berkhoff's little section on justification in his Systematic Theology, which I just reread, is excellent.

How about let's go to a confession? I mean, Belgian Confession 23 is on justification, and it's written in such a devotional style that if I handed it to an Arminian, they'd have a hard time disagreeing with it, and they would say, you know what, that's exactly right.

It's got a devotional flavor, and it pushes all the ground and condition of our salvation to Christ's work. And then 24, sanctification. So maybe if we could just get them to read a simple paragraph in a confession, maybe.

That would be helpful.

I think a problem is going to come up, though, because so many people that you and I know are going to read the confession, or they're going to read Fesco or Buchanan or one of these, and as soon as they see theological labels shorthand, like covenant of works, covenant of redemption, covenant of grace, they're going to put it down and say, oh, that's not biblical.

I only believe the Bible. How do we get to this place when that's going to happen?

Well, I mean, the way to turn the ship of people's minds usually is sequential, verse-by-verse teaching from their pastor. You know, how often can we change minds via tweets and radio shows and things like that?

Maybe, you know, there's some degree of change, I guess. But, you know, for me, I just try to influence people with preaching, with...even as you study the Bible and you think, you know what? You look at Luther, righteousness, at least he believed there was a righteous God who was angry with the wicked, and he needed to get out from underneath that wrathful, righteous.

God.

And God, you know, even thinking about prepositions, the righteousness of God, and then he gets to chapter 3, and then there's righteousness from God. So maybe a good verse-by-verse studies through the book of Romans might help.

I'm confused, Pat, because I'm usually asking the questions, and now you asked me the hard.

Question.

I like to know the answers and be witty on radio.

Oh, I The I believe the Bible, believe so damaging because we all have our interpretations, and theological shorthand is helpful.

I just read a quote by Richard Muller, and he said, essentially, every anti-Trinitarian in the 16th century was a Biblicist. But John Calvin was okay using extra-biblical words for theological shorthand to figure out who actually was Orthodox and who was not, and I thought...

I think my background, and I'm not trying to blame anyone for this, this is my own problem, the Biblicist background that I had, I've now jettisoned, and the way I think about it, Pat, and you probably think about it the same way, sola scriptura, what does it mean?

It does not equal Biblicism. It does not equal, when I come to Hebrews chapter 6, I have to make sure I have a blank slate, I have to have biblical amnesia, I can't think of anything that's gone before in Hebrews, in the New Testament, in the Old Testament, or the foundation of the Church that God has raised, Ephesians 2 and 4, with pastors and teachers.

I have to come to the text blankly. That was the way I would probably think in the past. So when you've got the Reformation and sola scriptura, I think it's Van Hooser who uses tradition 0, 1, and 2. Tradition 1 is, what Augustine said about the Trinity that matches the Bible, we accept.

What Augustine said about penance and the Mass, we don't accept, that's tradition 2. And then tradition 0 is, we don't accept anything, and we come to the text as blank slates, and that's where, you know, Mueller says, oh, that's how cults start, that's how Jehovah's Witnesses start, that's how, you know, my friends who are Arminians say to me, you know, after I've just preached for two hours on the sovereignty of God, and they say, whosoever will may come, yeah, I know that.

So would you be in general agreement with tradition 0, 1, and 2 as I described them?

That sounds good to me. I like the way you said it, and it made total sense.

Gospel-Centered Ministry, Preaching, and Assurance

All right, well, we usually have a 24-minute and 30-second show. Today we went over a little bit. Anything else, Pat, you're dying to tell the No Compromiseville land? I think you need a radio show.

You're articulate, kind, and a faster bicyclist.

It's funny, nothing else to be said other than believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.

Pat, when you think about gospel ministry, you think about verse-by-verse teaching, and where Omaha Bible Church is today, any kind of changes that have really affected the practical ministry there?

I know you preach verse-by-verse, that's never changed. You want to give people the Bible with counseling, that's never changed. Is there anything that's not fundamentally changed, but methodologically changed because of your growing maturation in some of these thoughts?

It's changed in the way the Bible is true, it needs to be proclaimed. But even in preaching verse-by-verse, I would be afraid to go back and listen to my Matthew series and the temptation of Jesus. I was far too quick, I can hear you laughing already, far too quick to say, when you're tempted, you should quote the Bible too.

First and foremost, it was about principles, how that was very much a liberal idea. When the Bible was not about Jesus anymore, they had to make it somehow relevant. They taught people principles to live by.

Now, I would preach that part application-wise, but it would be much later in the sermon. First and foremost, it would be, that's why you need to trust Him. A believer in Christ now, when you're tempted, let's follow His example, but before He's an example, He's a Savior.

I kind of like to tell people anymore, for shock value, like my big brother would, don't just do something, stand there. So, someone did say to me recently, I want my old church back, us moralizing salvation with fear and trembling, and so there has been a change, but I think change for the better.

Yeah, Pat, I would say the similar thing is happening here at Bethlehem Bible Church. We're in the book of Hebrews now, and so before, you know, warning passages aside, before he gets to any practical outworking of doctrine, it's all Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

And these poor people are getting persecuted, they're on the run, haven't died yet, but that's around the corner. And so, what do you tell people, you know, that are struggling with persecution? And for the writer of Hebrews, it's, well, let me just give you a good picture from the Old Testament of who Jesus is and how He's greater than anything, so in your temptations you don't go back to the old way.

And so, I think about that, and I know people say, I'd like more application, you know, they live in a Bible study fellowship, life application Bible, Beth Moore, these are five things to do, and there's nothing wrong with saying, even from the pulpit, in light of what we've learned, there's five things that God requires in this passage, you know?

I don't know, 1 Corinthians 16, 13, there are five commands there. I'm not afraid to say that, but I'm putting more emphasis on who we are in Christ versus how do we respond. Does that make sense?

It makes total sense, yeah, I'm super thankful for that, I know that's true about you. I like to tell people that Jesus is better than I even thought He was, and we just have opportunity to learn that again and again, and the Lord knows we forget, that's why until He comes again, we're to do this in remembrance of Him, and we eat the bread and we drink the wine, because we are prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it, right?

So true. I tell people, Pat, here, my shock value is, if you like Jesus, you'll like this Church. But if you're bored hearing about Jesus every week, I mean, just reading today, Jesus is walking on the water, and He intended to pass them by.

And you're like, what do you mean? Like, hi, how are you doing? I mean, that's all language from Exodus, where God passes by Moses as he's tucked in the cleft of the rock. I'm going to show you who I am, because you need a good dose of how great I am to get you through the night, as it were.

And I just think, you know what, if you're bored with that, I don't know what to tell you, because the view's got a lot of ways to do practical things, Oprah's got a lot of ways, Joe Osteen's got a lot of ways.

If you want a list, I guess I can give you the list, but like I said before with a different subject, how's that working out for you?

No kidding. Maybe we should do another show sometime and talk about the value of having a life coach, because your pastor isn't one.

Yeah.

Well, you would be the taskmaster, because you're the, you know, the RPMs. When I first started bicycling, maybe I could do all right around you, but now I just say, since you're my brother, let me just draft you, please.

I don't need to pull, I just, please let me draft you.

Pat, the other thing that...

I'll just talk about bike riding today, it just makes me want to go ride with you, but it's like 20-some degrees here in Omaha today, and I'm miserable.

Pat, it's about 20-something here, about 25 mile an hour winds, it's awful, so I don't think I'm going to be bicycling today. One last...

I'm trying to ride a fat bike and be less fat myself.

Well, you are the skinnier version of me, I will definitely confess that. Pat, one last thing about ministry changes, methodologically, philosophically. I think what's happened here at Bethlehem Bible Church, I've tried to make it happen, is it was Rome that took away assurance, and it was Rome that said, you know what, you just have to do more.

Whatever you're doing is in, so now just it's in plus one, that's your life. Because if you do have a mixture of justification and sanctification, if there is a final justification, if you do have to treasure a Christ, well, you just have to treasure more.